No no no no NO NO NO!
The friends yelled inside his head.
LEAVE! HURRY!
“I hafta pay,” Conner said aloud.
NO! LEAVE!
“He won’t let me leave if I don’t pay,” Conner said slowly. It was hard to talk, the fungus coated his mouth so thickly. Just then, Mike emerged from his office. The stout redneck greeted him with a warm smile.
“Well, howdy there, Nilsen! It’s been a while since you’ve come over to this ne—”
Mike stopped when he saw the batteries. A look of puzzlement crossed his face, and he glanced warily from the cart to Conner. Then, Mike’s eyes lighted upon the top of Conner’s head, and the crimson fungus that covered it. His mouth dropped open, and he took a step sideways.
Conner
(the friends)
stared back with dead eyes. Then he felt the fungus tighten again around his skull, and he could feel himself inside Mike’s mind, inside his brain, like a tumor.
A crimson tumor.
He could hear Mike’s heartbeat in his ears, and the odd whispers as Mike’s thoughts intertwined and passed his by. Mike spoke, and Conner could hear it from not only the man’s mouth, but his conscience. The voice was shaky — afraid.
“Now, hang on one second sir, I just ... I just need to go back and g-get ... something.” He jerked his thumb towards the back office, before turning and hurrying — no, running — off behind the counter.
But Conner knew better. He could see the phone on the office desk, and the gun in the drawer, a handgun with a gleaming silver barrel, and he could feel the phone buttons under Mike’s fingers as he dialed for the police.
HE KNOWS!
Conner thought to run, but overpowering all his thoughts were his friends. They spoke two words:
KILL HIM
And as the fungus surged tighter around Conner’s head, he pushed his mind against the dull confines of Mike’s brain, and felt Mike’s thoughts stumble, and slip away.
A scream echoed from the back room, but Conner had already left Mike’s Hardware and Goods.
It would be almost eighteen hours before anyone ventured inside Mike’s, as Conner had thought to flip the door sign to read ‘Sorry, We’re Closed’ as he left.
And if that unfortunate shopper chose to wander into the back office, in search of Mike, they would find him.
His corpse would be lying as it had fallen, beside the desk. With morbid fascination, they might note through their shock that his head had literally imploded — destroyed from the inside, not out. And, thriving in the blood pooled on the cheap white tiles would be — as thick and soft (if that visitor dared to touch it) as a carpet, the crimson fungus.
Whatever human regret or guilt Conner had thought of killing Mike was drowned out by the clamor of the friends. As the daylight faded, they guided his hands, and he
(they)
wound wires and wrapped cords around, between, inside the 3000 batteries. He had to work outside now — the static from the TV inside the house was so loud, the noise was nearly incapacitating. It was late at night (he could not say what time exactly) when he hauled the mass of wires and batteries down to the pyramid. The lake glittered, dark and silent. The watery light of the pale moon shone dimly through the clouds. No birds called, no insects clamored. Only the wind sighed through the trees.
Staggering under the weight of the ‘capstone’, Conner tripped on something heavy and soft, and nearly fell down the gentle embankment towards the lakeshore. He stopped to wipe his brow (which was now home to several strands of the fungus, snaking down from his hairline) and examine what had tripped him.
It was a beaver, and it was stone cold dead.
Conner would have looked longer, if only to rest, but he
(they)
righted himself, shifted the capstone in his hands, and continued toward the pyramid. A stepladder leaned against it. He could not remember putting the ladder there, but...
Whatever.
It was only when he stood before the pyramid, as silent as the lake and the beaver, that he
(they)
allowed himself to rest. The voices had grown quiet, but Conner could feel their anticipation, their excitement. He knew what to do.
Climbing the ladder, and perching the capstone carefully, ever so carefully, against the rim of the socket, he leaned over, and then slowly, gently, lowered the capstone, until it touched the bottom of the socket...
Conner leapt back, falling from and howling in pain. He lay writhing on the grass, and blinked away tears as he inspected his hands. His palms, which had gripped the capstone, were burned raw and red. Above him, the pyramid exploded in light, and a single, blinding ray shot from the capstone into the dark sky. The clouds parted around it as it hurtled skyward, as if it was poison.
At the same time, every window in the house shattered, and he heard a coughing snap as the TV speakers gave out. The static was silent, but the pyramid roared like an ungodly machine. Inside the house, the figure in the TV pulsed crimson, before the screen shattered and melted.
As if an invisible cord had been unplugged, the pyramid was silent and dark once again.
As was the rest of the world. There was only silence ... echoing, deafening silence.
Conner lay dazed on the ground, the pain in his palms forgotten. The friends had ceased their chattering, but in their place was joy — sheer, overwhelming joy.
They were coming.
Why? Because he had called them — yes! He had called, and the friends had answered.
THEY ARE COMING!
But in calling them, he had made a pact, a union, a bond as immortal and eternal as time itself. He was one with his friends.
WE ARE COMING!
And, as if in sync with this revelation, thunder echoed from within the great, swirling hole
(—not a hole but a window)
(—not a window but an EYE)
the pyramid had opened in the clouds.
But with that, the feeling dissipated. It was totally gone — in its place was a cold dread.
A great cawing and crowing rent the air with deafening suddenness, and birds erupted from the forest, taking to the skies. Conner gazed in awe — by God, every bird from Haskell Lake to Rockville must have taken flight!
They swirled and wheeled under the hole
(eye)
above the lake, a mass so thick it seemed solid. And then, first slowly, but them in droves, faster and faster and faster, they dropped dead from the sky.
Feathered corpses splashed into the still waters like so many copper pennies in a fountain.
On his left, a deer ran from the woods, frothing at the mouth, its eyes wild. It was followed by two, three, five, eleven — dozens of deer sprinted past Conner, their chests heaving in desperate exertion. They reached the shores of the lake, and, skittering on the wet rocks, fell dead, as if mowed down by invisible bullets. Blood trickled from their nostrils and the corners of their eyes, and Conner vaguely realized they had all died from massive internal hemorrhaging. Soon, the corpses were piled like sandbags on a bulwark, and the beach rocks were slick with gore.
Conner sat up and rubbed his battered head — the moss fell off in dry clumps — it, too, was dead.
What had caused such wild fury, such insanity, such death?
The pyramid?
No.
The friends.
He had called, and they had answered, oh God, oh yes, oh God they were coming they were COMING THEY WERE—
Thunder echoed once more.
The lake began to writhe furiously, the water foaming and frothing, the black bird corpses on its surface like an oil slick, agitated by some unseen hand.
Cold terror gripped Conner's heart — not fear, not worry, not angst — terror. The kind of horror you feel when the world is dark, and shadows dance, and no birds call and thunder echoes in the west, and outside the window a wolf — but maybe not a wolf — no something more, something so ancient and
angry and HUNGRY howled with the thunder.
Conner felt this now, and he tried to run.
The thunder echoed again, but this time it was not a single peal, it was a constant, awful thrumming, groaning, wailing, and the lake writhed and the hole
(eye)
swirled.
Oh, he tried to run, but he could not move. And so he watched, with indescribable horror as lightning flashed again, again, again, it then it was the color of the fungus, it was RED, RED RED—
And so he watched as something — a craft, a ship, a messenger from a place so distant and cold that lay in slumber under the light of a thousand foreign stars, that had flown through nebulae and centuries of howling darkness, until it had found a beacon, found a signal, found him — lowered itself from the hole in the clouds.
And so what could Conner do but watch as his fingernails fell off and his skin cracked and burned red and as the grass withered and as the lake boiled and the trees snapped and burst into flames, and he screamed into the air that screamed around him.
Because they had come.
The Friends had come.
~~~~~
~~~~~
Luke Dykowski is a freshman from Wisconsin. In addition to writing, he enjoys cross country skiing, marching band, geography, and spending time with his (terrestrial) friends. This is his first published work.
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Other Side of the Tracks
by Daniel DeLong; published October 31, 2014
First Place Winner, 2014 Fiction Vortex Horror Contest
The day they found Tobin's body in the creek was when she knew her days were almost at an end. She hid nearby in a little hollow of cottonwood trees while the search-and-rescue people and firefighters removed him from the water.
The two of them had spent time in that hollow, sleeping there, eating whatever they could scrounge from the dumpster behind the Mexican restaurant a few blocks away. But they hadn't been there for a long time ... hadn't been hungry or even able to eat or drink anything for many weeks.
They hadn't slept in months.
The firefighters joked that they were in the movie Stand By Me, going down the railroad tracks to see a dead body by the river. But she wasn't upset by that. How could they know?
She saw his face when they rolled him over. His skin looked like frosting, eyes melted from their sockets.
"Been floating in the water at least four days," the coroner remarked, looking at what he assumed was water-logging and perhaps the nibbling of tiny fish. But he was wrong. Other things could make your face look like that. And in the end they had.
The coroner's assistant — a cute young thing like Tandy imagined she herself had once been — carefully examined Tobin's body as it lay on the muddy bank where the search and rescue raft had towed it and the firefighters pulled it out. Poking through his clothes, she quickly found the small disk-shaped box where Tobin kept his rosary. At first glance it was mistaken for a can of chewing tobacco.
The death wouldn't cause much of a stir. He had no ID, his odd finger-print patterns would find no match and, of course, he looked older than his age ... older by decades. Best he could recall he'd been about twenty-two but could easily have passed for seventy or more. Just another homeless old-man, probably got drunk and fell into the creek and drowned. There wouldn't even be a story in the paper.
She'd only known him about six months, she thought ... maybe a little longer? It was hard to tell. First they stole your flesh, then your memories.
And eventually they stole your eyes.
She opened up the tiny paper, the poem he'd written her two nights before when he realized his sight had begun to leave him:
I am not drowned
I am alive
I am resolved
I am dissolved
I am bound on the outside
And lost on the green railroad track
Something in it, something in there for her, he'd said. He couldn't remember but he'd thought it might make a difference. Now she could only wonder at his words ... an upside-down prophesy, like he'd known what would happen yet cried out in denial. For he was most definitely drowned. He was not alive.
The railroad tracks—not green, but silver and gray and brown with rusted ambivalence — had ultimately led him back here, back to the east side of the river where it snaked through the industrial areas abutting downtown, near their former nest in the cottonwood trees with its myriad of single-use plastic bags and soiled blankets.
I am resolved
She folded the tiny paper and put in her pocket, repeating the words in her mind even as they slipped away from her.
Tobin was in a body-bag now, the firefighters carrying him back up to the tracks on one of those gurneys with the retractable legs ... no way wheels would roll down here. The search-and-rescue people picked up their inflatable raft and carried it away. The coroner put Tobin's rosary into a small plastic bag.
Something turned over beneath her feet. She'd felt it before, but never this close.
The cops were the last ones to leave. They took a few more pictures and then went the way the others had gone.
I am dissolved
It was many hours later when she emerged and long after nightfall. The twin ribbons of track curved away the direction Tobin had been taken, the lights of the city reflecting on their arch. But she turned the other way and moved off into darkness, navigating by wooden ties and gravel, deflected back to the center whenever her stumbling feet veered and contacted steel rail.
~~~~~
She walked all night and the sleeping neighborhoods she passed didn't awaken. Daylight found her beyond the city at the edge of the foothills and back at the old water tower. She climbed. They were less prevalent up here; she couldn't feel them as much.
She wondered if she was sad about Tobin. She was pretty sure that was what she was supposed to feel, and she could remember that she had been sad about things before: her grandmother dying, a lost dog — or had it been a cat?
Sad. She knew what it meant. She just couldn't remember what it felt like.
The boards of the water tower were old and black, broken in some places. Inside were bugs and nests of spiders and other things. She crawled inside and sat amongst them and watched a late morning winter sun pass through the wide spaces between the boards. This tower would not hold water, she thought. It would just spill out.
That made her sad.
She sat inside for the rest of the day and the night. When morning came she could still see light between the boards, but to her eyes it appeared much dimmer than before and she knew her time was growing short. She crawled out of the tower and down the splintery wooden ladder to the ground and with nothing else to do, began walking. Her arms and legs shimmied like the steering wheel of an old car.
The tracks continued on and she followed them for a time, eventually coming to an abandoned spur with weeds growing up between the ties. Feeling an unexplained compulsion she left the main line and followed the spur as it turned west, towards the foothills and across a field. Very soon there were no more ties. Unpinned rails lay directionless and half-buried until they themselves abruptly ended. Something caught her eye, a single sheet of paper tacked to a fence post. It fluttered in the tiny breeze. She moved over to it.
It was a "missing person" flier and it had been there a long time ... months. Her eyes were failing. She stretched closer to see. The faded picture was that of a smiling young woman with a pretty face.
bound on the outside
A wrinkled hand moved to her mouth but wasn't fast enough to stop the scream that descended quickly into a moan.
It was her. The face on the flier was hers ... or what had been hers.
She turned away, mouth gnawing on her withered knuckles, tearless eyes clamped shut. She fell to her knees and shuddered like an unbolted machine. The flier continued to flutter. After a moment she opened her eyes. The raised rail bed, free of wood and steel, bent away towards the
foothills, a flat, narrow carpet of weeds and grass bisected by a single foot-path.
the green railroad track
And then she remembered.
~~~~~
Grasshoppers ricocheting from their footfalls as they'd walked, the grass on the rail bed as green as the fields on either side, a few cattle in the distance. It had been their second date, and he'd told her about a place he wanted to take her.
Eventually the fields gave way to forest, the heat of late spring cut with moss and earth, grass replaced by pine needles and leaves. They came to a fence. The no-trespassing sign declared watershed land belonging to the city and that all violators would be prosecuted.
"Won't we get in trouble?"
"Nah," he'd told her. "No official people ever come up here. At least I've never seen any."
The further they went the more rugged the land became. They crossed a rocky stream by stepping on undercut concrete footings, canted remnants of a long-vanished bridge that bore the same lichens as the smooth stones around them.
"How long ago did they...?"
"Shut down this line? In the thirties I think, not long after they built the highway over the mountains. Used to be this was the best way over to the coast, unless you wanted to cross a bunch of private properties with toll-roads. That's what folks used to do in these mountains. Buy some land, build a road and then charge people to use it."
He found local history fascinating and got very excited when talking about it. It was one of the things she liked about him.
"I meant the tunnel. How long ago did they close it?"
"Oh." He blushed a little. She liked that too.
"In the fifties. It was the height of the Red Scare and they were afraid communists were going to hold-up in there and take over the country or something." They both laughed.
The rail bed was becoming less obvious. Large trees grew in the path, and only by comparison with the truly giant ones on either side was it apparent that men had once shaped this land. Steep banks suddenly rose on either side of the trail. They were there.
Moss grew thick on the crumbling portal, at first glance no different than any other outcrop on the abrupt hillside. Then she saw the hole in the side of the mountain. Brooklets born of a wet spring wound down from the headland and dropped in cascades, tiny waterfalls guarding a dark archway.
"It's smaller than I'd pictured."
"This was a narrow-gauge railroad. They were cheaper to build, especially in the mountains where there would be a lot of tunnels and bridges. This tunnel was over a mile long."
Fiction Vortex - October 2014 Horror Issue Page 5